


Solitude

by FeatheredMask



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Blood, Everyone is Dead, Loneliness, Minor Character Death, Other, Outer Space, Post-Apocalypse, spaaaaaaaace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2019-10-01 23:50:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17253695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeatheredMask/pseuds/FeatheredMask
Summary: Space was a big, lonely thing that made people feel small. Floating up there in a spaceship too big for one person made that reality too obvious for comfort. At least he had a bite-sized god in that big spaceship in that big outer space to keep him company.In the words of my friend, "is. is adrien in space"Yes. Yes, he is.





	1. Prologue: Crowd

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A protector was supposed to protect, right? If nothing else, Adrien held Plagg close and knew they would protect each other.

**Solitude**

It had been years since Adrien had seen another human being. 

Truth be told, he had lost track of exact time measurements after the ship had left the solar system, but he was fairly certain several years had passed. At least four years, if the ship’s clock was correct, but the counter froze occasionally. Nothing so long as a decade. Long enough for him to have a growth spurt and survive the awkward gangly stage. 

The ship had once been a luxurious hub, not unlike a cruise ship. But humans hadn't advanced space technology enough for it to be widely available, leaving this escape pod to the hideously rich. All they could do was outfit it with the latest experimental technology and splurge on amenities. A rush order placed to make this heap of junkyard scrap smell appealing. 

Adrien hated how difficult it was to get blood stains out of those cushions. 

 

\-----

 

At the time, it seemed like the only option. The entire Earth population was in danger. The only launch that even looked viable had limited space. 

His father gave everything just so Adrien could have a ticket. Chloe, for all of her bluster, chose to stay on Earth. It would separate the two of them, but Adrien saw behind all of her tears that she would be devastated to not be able to take her family with her. Instead, they paid for the jet that took him to Russia and wished him luck in finding a better life. 

In the days leading up to the trip, he managed to say his goodbyes to classmates, but Ladybug eluded him, failing to show up when akumas were just as absent. Plagg refused to part with him, stowing away in his pocket, hissing at any suggestion that they should give up the ring to Ladybug for safe keeping. 

The first week hadn't been bad. Adrien could almost convince himself that he really was just on a luxury cruise liner. Minus the view out the windows of endless black sky and stars. Minus everyone around him constantly preoccupied with wondering when the asteroid would hit Earth. 

In the second week, they lost radio contact with Earth. Adrien turned away from the screen full of static and sipped his champagne. The elderly Russian couple who missed having children offered him reassuring pats on the back. He missed Ladybug. 

By the end of the first month, Adrien found some solace in the botany rooms, tending to delicate plants that were supposed to become their food source. Plants didn't get homesick. They didn't cry, grieve, or panic. Plagg flitted among the dense forests of oat and tomato stalks, pouncing on his hand when he reached in among the green. 

In the third month, stability was crumbling. Gone was the honeymoon stage of the novelty of being on a luxury spaceship. Nobody could pinpoint Earth among the dots out the window anymore. A few people were apparently claustrophobic and needed to see the sun and sky, and there was only so much alcohol on board. Homesickness had passed, replaced with grief for those on Earth and the homes they left behind. These emotions burst out in shouts and anger at each other. Out of habit, Adrien kept an eye out for an akuma. 

The shouting didn't stop. 

The ship was only so large. Adrien tried, but there were few rooms he could find to escape all the people full of pent-up frustration and ready to blow off steam at the first person to get on their nerves. Rich, entitled people who tried to keep up their networking party-faces for too long. Plagg grumbled at his shoulder while he took refuge in a cramped closet. 

His back slid down the wall of the closet. “I wish Ladybug was here. She could cheer anyone up. At least I’d have someone to talk to.” He chose to ignore the thought that he envied Chloe for staying behind. With the idea that an asteroid was supposed to have wiped out Earth by then, it was a morbid, selfish wish. “Other than you, Plagg. I’m glad you haven’t gone as stir-crazy as everyone else has.” 

“Pfft. Don’t put me on the same level as humans,” Plagg griped. “None of you are supposed to be this far from Earth. I’m surprised it took this long for anyone to snap, really. Humans are so fragile. Actually, I’m surprised the human race has lasted so many millennium…”

Adrien laughed quietly. He put a hand over his mouth when he heard footsteps outside the closet. 

The next few days passed with rising voices. Everyone was on edge, and it showed; jumping at the slightest thing, small yelps and screams. Adrien did his best not to brush against anyone, but there was only so much he could do, especially with the crowds as everyone attended the dining rooms at the same times throughout the day. Waiters delivered ordered breakfast items to tables, and yet, people still found reasons to yell at each other. 

Then there came the day that blood spilled. 

A knife flashed at a table across the dining room, and blood tickled at Adrien’s nose, interrupting the aroma of coffee and syrupy toast. He jumped up, and didn’t need an excuse for the elderly couple he shared a table with before running out. The atmosphere had been tense for so long, that at the sight of actual violence, it didn’t seem out of place to flee. 

Within moments, Chat Noir was on the scene, diving in to put himself between the man with the bloodied knife and everyone else in the dining room. A woman cowered against the wall, her arm staining her fox fur bolero dark red. 

The attacker hesitated at his appearance. But only for a moment-

“Stop right there,” Chat Noir growled, and it had the desired effect. He took his eyes off the man to get a better look of the environment, and found much the same frozen fear across the room. But their eyes flickered, and children were ushered behind backs. 

They didn’t just fear the man who’d been so bold as to spill blood. They feared the famed black cat superhero of Paris. 

Chat Noir’s confidence wavered. Back in Paris, civilians trusted him and Ladybug to protect them, even to the point where they would fearlessly throw themselves in the way of danger. But here… He berated himself for using French when Chinese was probably the more understood among this worldly group of the 1%. 

He didn’t get much time to think before the knife came flying at him instead, a scream ripping from the throat of the man gripping it tight. Compared to akumas, this was almost too easy. Chat Noir grabbed one arm with an iron grip, and held onto it as he sidestepped behind the man, and snatched the other arm to immobilize the man’s upper body. His legs remained free, but the man didn’t think to take advantage of that. 

“Not much of a listener, are you? I told you to stop,” Chat Noir said in Chinese, and understanding dawned on the man’s face, at last. To be sure, he repeated his words in English, and more faces across the room twitched. He twisted the knife out of the man’s grasp, and threw it at the floor some distance away. 

He raised his voice, keeping to Chinese, “You know me as Chat Noir, protector of Paris. And I’m going to do my best to protect all of you on this ship.”

It was a noble promise. Plagg even commended him on the idea when he had a moment to himself to drop the suit. 

If only it had meant something. 

Not even a week later, as screams rang through the ship, Adrien found that he couldn’t protect anyone. The old woman shoved him into one of the empty storage lockers meant to hold their luggage, locking him in before he could protest, or even think of transforming. His thumping on the door went unnoticed under all the stomping, screaming, and choked gurgles. 

The second time blood reached his nose, he couldn’t dive into action. Adrien choked on the smell, and prayed that nobody heard him.


	2. Prologue (part 2): One By One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter content: poison, paranoia, murder, blood, death, dead children, food mention, I put Adrien through way too much
> 
> I feel like everyone's so busy lately. I couldn't find anyone to beta this chapter besides my primary ML beta giving it a once-over. This chapter turned out much too dark for a quick prologue, and I was hoping for some advice on tying everything up before the time-skip next chapter, but I've been at a loss for how to improve this chapter. The dark tone really does not match what I have plotted out for later chapters. It's my birthday on March 7th, and I wanted something posted before then. 
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy this anyway.

**Solitude**

 

After forcing himself through the haze of death permeating the ship, Chat Noir reached the control room, and found the answer behind all the violence and tension scrawled out in hasty pen:

Carbon monoxide poisoning. 

He peeled the sticky note off some sort of scale that ticked too high, glanced at the pilot slumped in his chair, and swallowed the bile that threatened to come up. 

Blood saturated the pilot’s shirt. Someone had gone ham on the stabbings. Looking around the room, Chat Noir wasn’t so sure the other pilot had felt a strong sense of camaraderie between their shared job. 

He tried not to breathe too deeply as he turned to the meters and radars and controls on the dashboard. At least he now had a real physical thing he felt he could do something about. That was, if he could fix it before everyone on the ship died. 

Carbon monoxide…that meant there was a leak somewhere, right? He couldn’t remember what carbon monoxide even was -- he had been supposed to start chemistry classes the following year -- but he knew it was some kind of gas. Something on TV about people thinking places were haunted. That didn’t explain why he wasn’t affected; but now he was hesitant to transform back just to ask Plagg about it. If carbon monoxide could do something like that to the people here, then he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk dropping his transformation anytime soon. He had transformed as soon as the little kwami popped the lock off the storage locker, and the sudden boost of athleticism saved him from becoming a victim of the mad screaming, knives and metal in hand, mindless of their own injuries— 

Chat Noir shook his head to shake off the image. “Have to concentrate,” he muttered. Questioning the effects was useless at this point. He ignored the slumped pilot beside him, leaning forward to read the various controls. Or try to, at least. Carbon monoxide meter…too high. Maybe. The pilot had thought so, anyway. So he had to find where it was leaking from. 

He crouched down, and found an array of closed compartments. Now, to pray that the pilots kept manuals close by the controls. 

They did. Jackpot. 

Chat Noir skimmed through one of the many booklets from the compartments, searching for any hint of where gas pipes in the ship were located. The extra blessing came in the form of full-color pictures detailing which pipes were which, with a brief blip about how carbon monoxide was a potential hazard from ship waste being burned for fuel…and the heating, innocuously enough. Convenient. Once he found the pages identifying the heating units, he tore them out -- and glanced to the door. Nobody came storming in at the noise. 

“Alright,” he said, standing up and stretching, pages in hand. In his other hand, the screen flipped up on his baton. As expected, the dots hopped without connecting, but a lump formed in his throat anyway. 

“My Lady,” he whispered to the frozen picture on the screen. “Wish me luck.” 

He opened the door --

He dashed out, baton at the ready for any dangers he came across. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, hoped that others had found places to hide like the storage lockers. It was up to him to protect who was left. That promise kept him going as he ran past slumped bodies and hopped along the walls to avoid puddles of blood. 

His goal wasn’t to follow the red trails. The pages cramped with maps and directions guided him, tucked away in his pocket. He stopped at various vents, only for a moment bemoaning the lack of screwdrivers readily available before he stuck his face right up to the vents in question, sniffing. Inhaling potential poison didn’t strike him as a smart idea, but hey, he wasn’t known for his smarts. Ladybug had the strategies. He just put plans into motion, and he did that here, fixing what the pilot had identified. 

It didn’t help that he had no idea what carbon monoxide smelled like. All the vents smelled a little noxious to him, warm air blowing to keep passengers toasty through the vacuum of space. It didn’t help that the heavy smell of fresh blood was so much stronger than his will to avoid looking at the bodies. 

When a prickling taste in his mouth had him recoiling from a vent, tail curling, he knew he had found it. That was when he grabbed the metal grate over the vent, dug his claws in around the edges, and wrenched it out of the wall with a lurch that threw him back to the floor, screws and all. The grate fell on the floor with a clang. 

Leaning his baton against the wall, Chat Noir reached in, holding his breath as he stuck his head inside for a better look, night vision giving him a better view inside. Would’ve been better with a flashlight, but hey, he was on a time crunch. 

Smooth metal walls lined the air duct. He growled in frustration. So this wasn’t the source; it only carried air from the source. But he paused, spotting a strange discoloration on one of the walls, and tried to inch closer, crawling in, his nose twitching. 

Hands grabbed his ankles. Chat Noir yelped as he was abruptly yanked out of the vent. He scrabbled at the vent with his claws, but found no purchase. 

Metal flashed out of the corner of his eye as he was pulled into the light, and he just barely managed to roll out of the way of the knife. He landed on all fours before bouncing to his feet, snatching up his baton. Whirling around, he deflected another stab. 

The man spoke in English. It was more like yelling. The man’s voice was hoarse around labored breaths. Chat Noir had no idea how long this man had been going around, hunting for him. But he was definitely the intended target. 

“You did this,” rattled the man, punctuating each note with another stab of his knife. “Sneaking around. Never showing your face. Spying from around corners, using my mistress to get to me. But it didn’t work. Because I’m one step ahead of you, murderer.”

“Me? But I didn’t do anything!” Chat Noir hesitated to attack, using his baton as a shield; this was no akuma. No Hawkmoth villain to shatter. No Ladybug miracles to fix stray bruises or injuries. 

Sick. This man was poisoned, just like the rest of the ship. Chat Noir had been hiding since the day they took off, laying low as Adrien under the affectionate watch of the doting Russian couple. He ignored the fresh memory of the wife’s body splayed on the floor. 

“Don’t lie to me!” 

This man blamed him. 

And all Chat Noir could do was hurt him, his baton coming down on the side of the man’s head, knocking him out. The heavy body fell on the floor like a sack of potatoes. 

Then it hit him. Chat Noir gasped, feeling his mind spin and water wet his mask. The fight had been nothing for the stamina the suit gave him. But it had shaken him emotionally. A dark blow to his own view of Chat Noir as a hero. 

He wiped his eyes before checking the man’s pulse. Erratic, but there. 

Chat Noir leaned on his baton for a moment, staring at the floor. “Ladybug.” His voice was soft and breathy. “I need you right now. A lot.”

Ladybug wouldn’t be coming this time. They had never had the right opportunity to reveal their identities to each other, so she would never know that her partner had shot up into space, far, far away from Paris. Not for the first time, he regretted keeping that secret for so long. Masks and secret identities seemed so silly when he was facing so much death like this. 

He tried to steady his racing heart, forcing himself to step over the unconscious body. He peered into the vent again, and it took longer than it should have for the strange marks in the duct to make sense in his mind. 

Cracks. If he could seal up those cracks, maybe it would solve some of the carbon monoxide. Maybe. His mind was a little jumpy right then. It meant he was close, though. He wondered what it meant if he had to tear the wall apart to get to the leak. 

For the time being, however, he welcomed the simple task before him: fix the cracks. He knew just where to get duct tape. Back on track. Back to saving the- well, this world shaped like a spaceship. 

Over the preceding months, Adrien had come to know all the small, hidden niches where he could hide away from the other passengers. That included the closets that held cleaning supplies and all the tools needed for quick maintenance. In one of these unobtrusive rooms, Chat Noir found duct tape. It made his stomach roll every time he had to walk over or around the man on the floor, but didn’t want to entertain the possibility of moving him. Taking care of the bodies came later, when he had dealt with the more important issue of the leak. Once the leak was gone, maybe anyone left alive could sleep off the poison until the air systems filtered it out. 

After taping up the cracks, he took his baton along with a deep breath, and jammed it into the wall, making a hole. He ripped off the thin, flimsy wall protecting a mess of metal and wires and tubes until he was coughing in a cloud of dust. 

Despite the ensuing mess and overwhelming amount of wires and pipes, he got down on his knees, and spread the pages before him on the floor, smoothing out the crumpled paper. The illustrations on the paper looked so clear-cut and precise...nothing like the layers and layers of support systems he saw when he lifted his head. But something here was broken, and with a roll of duct tape, he had to fix it. 

By the time he taped up all the suspect pipes, warm and hissing at him, his hands were shaking. The two of them would probably benefit from dropping into the kitchens for a cheese break, but Chat Noir didn’t want to take any chances of being surprised unprepared. So he grabbed his baton, checked the heartbeat of the unconscious man beside him, and walked away from the wall.

Bodies. Chat Noir opened more and more doors, and all he found were more bodies. The stink of blood made it hard to breathe without puking. A few doors here and there were locked, and he knocked on those, announcing his presence, but with no answers. It made his heart sink to think they didn’t trust him, the man’s words echoing in his head. He consoled himself with the idea that if people were hiding from him, at least they were alive to do that. Too many people he was finding murdered in their beds, or accompanied with dark smears on the wall from a struggle. 

Until he activated Cataclysm, becoming desperate to find at least someone else who was just as alive as him, even if not in the best frame of mind. He hesitated before slamming his hand into the door, checking to make sure he probably wasn’t about to break anything integral to the ship structure or accidentally open an airlock. The door crumbled into ash, and he was left with a bedroom, something small curled up in the corner. 

He grit his teeth. He wrapped the young girl’s body in a blanket before carrying her out. 

No sign of a heartbeat, nor did she stir at his jostling. He walked with his head level, staring straight ahead.

Several more bodies took the heavy, somber walk down to the escape pods. Bobby pins tricked the locks on bedroom doors and storage lockers, freeing numerous small bodies, too weak to handle the gas. 

That explained why the bodies loosed outside were adults; the children and older passengers had hidden from the invisible threat, while the stronger went to take it head-on. 

With nowhere to lay someone to rest, and unwilling to let them become the compost that fertilized the green rooms, Chat Noir took them to the escape pods. Some laying down, some sitting, propped up against the wall, surrounding the door to one of the ship’s escape pods. The ship had four in total, none of them furnished as luxuriously has the rest of the ship. These weren’t meant for leisure; they’d been hawked as emergencies, in case the ship was compromised for whatever reason, giving just a few extra hours of life. It wasn’t fooling anyone; the ship was already an escape pod from Earth. 

His ring beeped along the countdown. After a few somber trips, the transformation fell. Adrien kept walking, delivering each bundled body with Plagg trailing along beside him. 

He saw no more need for Chat Noir, not when everyone was dead, and that one guy by the vent sleeping it off. Without the suit, everything felt so much heavier and so much more tiring. Yet Adrien kept going. Stopping counting didn’t stop the trips. 

When the room became packed, he stepped between the bundled bodies to reach the door, pressed in the override code, and opened the door to the escape pod. He tried not to think about it as he piled body after body inside. When he had been in all the rooms, and went to collect the rest of the bodies, lying in pools of blood in the halls and lounges, eyes wide open, limbs twisted in how they fell, Plagg transformed him without asking. It made the process easier and let him ignore the blood when it smeared on the suit instead of his skin. 

Filling the escape pod felt more like packing coats into a rapidly filling closet. Close to one hundred people had boarded the ship, and close to one hundred people would leave it. 

When Chat Noir walked back to check on the sleeping man, he felt numb when he found a pool of blood under the man. He didn’t have to search far for the culprit. 

A new body sat slumped in a chair nearby, red soaking the shirt, knife on the floor. The body looked dead, but still he checked for a pulse. 

He dragged both to the escape pod before sniffing around the ripped-off vent. It didn’t set the hair on the back of his neck prickling. The leak was taken care of. But he would check the pilots’ meter to be sure of that. He had to retrieve the pilots’ bodies, anyway. 

Nobody else emerged from the shadows as he did his last duty to humanity. Not to help, nor to attack in a fit of paranoia. It felt oddly like home, in his big mansion with nobody to talk to or play video games with. Before he had attended school. Before he had leaped out the window as a new person. 

He pressed in the code that would launch the escape pod, but hesitated on the final green button. Even if they were dead now, they had once been human. Laughing, smiling humans who all shared the grief of their home world and the fear for their futures. 

After Adrien pressed the button, he slumped to the floor. And finally, the ship devoid of human beings beside himself, he allowed himself to cry. Plagg’s comforting weight settled on his leg. 

\---

The first night felt surreal. 

After grabbing a cold pastry and some cheese from the kitchen, Adrien went back to his bedroom. It was brutally lonely. An empty queen and empty twin. The loving Russian couple would never whisper soft shushing stories in the last night again. 

No blood. No hidden bodies. The ship felt hauntingly quiet as the two of them curled up in blankets to eat. Just a boy and his kwami. The sweet bread turned sticky in his hands. It didn’t feel like a treat. 

It took maybe a week to clean the ship. Any bugs on board were restricted to the green rooms, but the blood became mottled, and harder to scrape off. Adrien scrubbed at several cushions before accepting that the dark stains weren’t going anywhere. At least the carbon monoxide meter showed no more problems. 

The other radars, however, pinged steadily. Adrien couldn’t understand the obscure pings and dots, and eventually took to scouring the many manuals for explanations. 

The days didn’t feel all too different from what they were before. Less hiding, definitely, and much quieter. He had never made any friends on the ship, the ages of other kids present too varied for him to relate to any of them, and the etiquette and polite small talk of the rich had never appealed to him. 

Now, he could sit in the main room, facing the wide window that showed the cosmos outside like a big television set, a manual in hand, with Plagg lounging on a plush, pristine cushion at his feet. Sitting there, as the ship cruised, it suddenly hit Adrien on what all those alerts on the radars meant. 

Outside the window, a large planet of green and blue slowly filled the span of the window. 

The manual tumbled to the floor, startling Plagg from his nap.


	3. Acquaintances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien mourned his friends and moved on. The years alone in space hardened him. 
> 
> Also known as: Adrien internally screams as he's dragged into political talks between envoys from Earth and the empire he now serves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a difficult chapter, after the first two chapters set the tone and writing style, and I thought I couldn't meet that standard. I've decided to go for an overall slightly darker tone than I originally planned. But yeah, grown-up Adrien is doing pretty well for himself in space, minus the trauma and minor suicidal tendencies. 
> 
> In regards to the drakka in this chapter, I thought that I had a few basic alien templates to work from: scales, fur, rubber, mechanical, and human-like skin. I've already done aliens with thick blue skin, rubbery skin, made of mechanical parts, and I didn't want to go the furry route, so now we have reptilian aliens. 
> 
> To help keep things straight, since this story has a bit of worldbuilding, here's a quick glossary for this chapter. Most names are from a conlang generator and the aliens are my creations. 
> 
> Sha Nwar: Chat Noir  
> Tacdru: name of a drakka character  
> Drakka: a reptilian alien race of the Ivshegho Empire  
> Ivshegho Empire: a major faction in the galaxy. The drakka and Sha Nwar belong to this faction  
> Ken'la: a squid-like aquatic alien race that can 'mimic' other creatures to look like them to a certain degree

“What do you think it’ll be this time, Plagg?” 

The timestamp displayed on the monitor held no relation to Earth. When installing the new software, a new, interstellar clock became the standard. It had taken Adrien a rough time to figure it out, and a rougher time adjusting his sleep to something resembling a proper schedule. With all the time changes between planets, however, he still ended up the unlucky black cat arriving in the dead of night, more often than not. 

Hands tapped at buttons and touch screens that now overtook the old Earth technology. Gone were the meters, the levers, the exposed wires, pedals, and anchors. No hologram pop-up screens; those were a waste of money. So much had been replaced over the years. Plagg darted in to rap at a screen on the other side of the room, prompting an equally-alien calendar to pop up, the previous days filled with to-do lists and deadlines. “We need a vacation! I hope it’s a delivery to a tropical place, with fruit, cheese, and beaches galore!” 

Adrien chuckled, his eyes trained on the star map in front of him. An easy drag of his fingers redirected their course, and the ship cruised on a curve. “Deliveries without a hunt are boring.”

Plagg scoffed, rolling in the air in front of Adrien’s face. “You need to stop taking on suicidal jobs, kid. It’s going to get you killed one day, and then where would I be?! Lost in space, light-years away from wherever the other kwamis ended up!”

“Getting hired to steal is hardly suicidal, Plagg,” Adrien argued, but grinned, taking the kwami’s dramatic antics in good spirit. This was one conversation they had fairly often. 

“The way you do it is.” 

Adrien playfully batted Plagg out of the air in front of him. A large circle loomed ever larger on the screen. Adrien focused on that, text expanding on screen with a touch. [PLANET: SOOD. POLITICAL STATUS: NEUTRAL. HOT TIPS: INVASIVE GROUND COVER. DUSTY, BUT BREATHABLE. KEEP A LOW PROFILE.] 

His own notes, of course. Few planets came with travel guidebooks, making it necessary to keep references in a language he understood in order to keep all the planets straight. He had learned more languages over the years out of necessity, but he clung to French. 

French would survive until his last days, and then after that, live on with Plagg. Out of everything else Earth on this ship, only his Plagg and French would last the longest. With Earth being a smattering of crushed rock so far away, the ship was the last piece of Earth he had left (who knew where Plagg was really from). He wasn’t sure he wanted to put the time and fuel into searching where in the galaxy Earth was located. He didn’t want to face the rocks and trash, or ruins of buildings, frozen in time by the freezing void of space, if the asteroid hadn’t caused widespread destruction before breaking up like a glass cup shattering when he threw it at the wall. 

One day, Adrien knew, there wouldn’t be anything left of this ship recognizable as originating from Earth. One day he might even trade it in for another model, one that was built for the planet-hopping travels he did, instead of retrofitted with warp technology. This ship had been improved over the years, but it hadn’t changed from a bulky monster, built for hibernation and a much larger crew than a boy and his kwami. 

A man and his kwami, now. Taller, stronger, more confident and sure of his steps and of his body, but the distinction wasn’t groundbreaking, in his opinion. Not when there were no social rituals around his age anymore. No rites of passage, no alcohol present to bond over, no relationships suddenly changing as others took notice of puberty ending and child relationships becoming adult relationships. He had grown into his powers, his job, and as an adult in these xenocircles, but it was not the adulthood he had expected. Not the adulthood of a human society. 

He had made a name for himself nonetheless, just as Adrien Agreste had once had been a star-studded name in Paris, just as Chat Noir had carried its own infamy. Sha Nwar had become just another name with attachments out in the greater galaxy. 

Adrien watched the planet through the window grow larger and geological formations become more detailed. He tapped on the screen, scans turning the digital image of the planet into an array of colors. Dots labeled clusters of civilization. “Whatever job Tacdru has for us, we’ll be staying a few days to resupply. Maybe we’ll find that one cheese you like for sale somewhere.” 

The worst part of the landing was finding a space big enough for the ship once he had broken into the atmosphere; one of the reasons he was on the lookout for a new, smaller ship, although this one held too much sentimental value. His orbit slowed to a near-stop and, in less than an hour, touched down with a cloud of dust. Years ago, back on Earth, physics might have said that kind of landing was impossible. Time spent with aliens that had conquered this technology had taught him that Earth science didn’t know as much as it claimed to. 

Adrien pulled a cloak on and the cowl over his head, and climbed out of the ship. A lock system made sure it closed behind him, and the key went into his pocket. He slid down the side of the ship, and turned around as he stepped out on the hardened ground, surveying his parking job. Not bad; lined up and placed neatly on a faint outline of a landing circle. He’d never driven a car before, but he sure could park a monster of a spaceship. 

A scarf over the lower half of his face kept the dust out. After making sure he had his wallet and the artifact on him, he turned and began walking down the line of ships, towards the city. 

It was more of an outpost than a city. Dirty walls, long claimed by the overgrowth of the planet’s invasive ground cover, with mold and mildew flourishing in the darker corners. People in rags and carrying stench begged in the alleys, kicked off steps, scrounging for any dropped penny -- or loose purse -- they could find. No government ruled here; the buildings were held up by iron owners and the grudging neutrality of its visitors. Trade bustled in open-air markets, everything legal and illegal to various planetary systems, traders striking out in a place where they wouldn’t be taxed. 

Adrien shuffled through the crowds, cloak pulled around his shoulders. Some wore suits like armor, some were encased in robotic suits, and others who could only just tolerate the air wore devices over their nose and mouth. 

Something surprising that Adrien had learned was that the basics of a living being on Earth were the same as the rules of living being across the galaxy. Most things needed legs, nose, mouth, and ears. Nothing beyond his understanding as he had once imagined. Some looked more exotic, but the major factions of the galaxy dominated with citizens that resembled something more humanoid than not. Anime and video games had gotten that part right, as it turned out. 

Plenty of beings, like him, walked without anything between their skin and the air. Nothing preventing him from taking in the dust or smells of the grimy city. He had no trouble breathing for the most part, but the dust that got past his scarf tickled the back of his throat. 

Despite his growth spurt, plenty of aliens towered over him-- although he was technically an alien to this planet, too. This was no world designed for humans anymore. The vendors he passed had no hint to whether he was child or adult other than that he was without a caregiver, and it wasn’t like humans were regular sights on this planet. A range of languages shouted, hissed, and clicked over his head. He understood smatterings of words, and ignored them all. Instead, he pulled a rag of a curtain aside to step inside a fluorescent-lit building. 

He could feel someone staring as soon as he walked in the bar. The place was sparse, tables dotting the wide room and a counter like a real Earth bar -- surprise surprise, the same sort of room layout worked for alien bars as well. Ethereal blue lights lined the ceiling, tucked between the rafters. 

The watched feeling made the hair on the back of his neck prickle, and he resisted the urge to rub his neck. 

The gaze crawled along his back as he went to the counter, and lingered as he grunted an order in the local trade language. He kept his hood up, taking a quick glance around, assuming it was just someone curious about what alien race he was. 

His eyes widened, and he had to blink a few times to make sure he was seeing that right. 

Humans. Dressed in uniforms and gas masks that filtered the air for them. Adrien turned away quickly and double-checked that Plagg was hidden, making sure the cowl was low enough over his head. 

He almost shoved Plagg back into his cloak when the small god's head popped out. “Hey. You okay?” Plagg asked, peering up at Adrien. “You’re kind of freaking out.” 

It took Adrien a whirling minute to realize he was hyperventilating. 

He hadn’t been physically sick in years. There had been injuries, of course. There was a level of danger to trying to do everything on your own. (Adrien liked to think that he was never alone, with Plagg always at his side. They were a team in that way.) 

Every job, every mission as he called them, came with more dangers. He often came out of things a little scuffed up, but at times there was worse. Broken limbs, burns, bullet wounds, deep gashes. Whether it came from artificial weapons or a planet’s natural defenses, each mission threw something new at him. 

Each time, he managed to limp back to his ship, pull out the first aid, and grit his teeth as Plagg stitched him back up. It left a scar or two, but he didn’t have any photo shoots or cameras to look pretty for. He thought the odd scar over his skin added to his roguish charm. Other soft mouths and appreciative eyes liked the look of them, but he declined to find out if alien biology and human biology meshed well. Finding races of people that passed for human were few and far between. His missions took him to plenty of places, but never did he find anything human. 

The first time he landed on a planet where his ship registered the outside air as toxic, Adrien…might not have been in the best mental state. There were suits on the ship, all of them sized for adults, none fitting a teen boy still waiting on his growth spurt. But he took his chances with the Chat Noir suit, and only received a scratchy throat for his outing. Plagg might have grumbled about suicidal tendencies now and then, but Adrien didn’t pay him any mind. Physics and atmosphere had no effect on him in the suit. When the suit fell, gravity threw him off-balance, but he didn’t choke to death, at least. 

But nothing had ever broken him out in sweat, clammy, with a roiling stomach. Just the sight, the idea, that other humans had survived, that he wasn’t the last one, made his vision spin. 

“Kid? Kid, can you hear me?” 

Adrien blinked, and rubbed the sides of his face, almost disturbing the scarf over the lower half of his face. 

Plagg poked his cheek, flitting around his head. “Kid, snap out of it. None of them noticed you.”

“Are you sure? One of them looked my way-- how do you know none of them saw me?” He tugged at the hood covering his head, twitching, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder. 

“You’re not even wearing one of those mouth things,” Plagg pointed out. “If they did see you, they probably think you’re just one of those mimic aliens.”

“But…” Adrien faltered. A dark drink slid across the counter, stopping at his hand in front of him. A woman waved a metal device in her hand, leaning a spotted arm on the counter as she waited for him. Adrien fumbled to get a card out of his wallet, trying to get a hold of his shaking, and swiped it over the device that pinged in acceptance. Who knew the rest of the galaxy used credit cards?

“I thought I was the last one, Plagg. Where would a Ken’la even find another human to mimic?” 

“If those really are humans over there, there have to be more of them somewhere.” Plagg drifted down, ducking under his cowl to nuzzle into the crook of his neck. “But as long as we have time before the meet-up… we can eavesdrop on them,” he pointed out. 

Adrien couldn’t help but smile at Plagg’s attempt at reassurance and the offer of more sneaky business. The suit would give him better hearing, anyway, but… “If I transform here, they might notice.”

“So don’t transform,” Plagg replied, his whiskers tickling Adrien’s neck. “It’s busy enough, nobody’ll notice if you get a little closer.”

Adrien wasn’t sure if Plagg had gotten better at comforting him over the years, or if his ideas of fun had gotten worse. But he shook his head and took a drink. It did nothing to help his stomach, but the action helped calm his nerves. Alien bar drinks had a spice to them, even if low in alcohol content. The idea of even going near other humans made his head spin. 

“What if we took a break?”

Adrien glanced to Plagg and waited for him to explain this new idea. 

“You know,” he went on. “Take that vacation I mentioned. Forget about work, and take that money to get us a comfortable week on a tropical tourist island. Your guy can wait.”

Adrien sighed. “I’m already here, Plagg. Besides, this guy is high-up in the Ivshegho Empire, and they helped us in the first place. I can’t bail on him.” He snuck a glance over to the table where the humans were seated. He couldn’t look away, but they didn’t seem to spot him. 

A girl with glasses and brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Another girl with cropped black hair. The third of their party, a man with blond hair, argued with the brunette, with the other girl fidgeting between them. He wasn’t close enough to hear, and their mouthpieces hid the shapes of their lips. 

Adrien’s staring was interrupted by someone, blocking his vision. A graveling language asked him a question.

“You took too long,” Plagg complained, even his whiny voice amusing the alien who had approached him. “Now we’ll never get that vacation!” 

Adrien ignored him. “Yeah, I have it,” he replied in the same language, reaching into his cloak. He didn’t pull out his hand, letting it linger there for a moment. “Payment? 

Shiny eyes, the pupils as narrow as his transformed eyes, followed his hand. “You will be paid, Sha. You always are.”

Adrien pulled his hand out of his cloak, flashing a dull piece of engraved dented metal before tucking it away again. “Payment first, Tacdru. Then you get your artefact. That’s how this goes.”

Tacdru smiled, pulling back skin to expose teeth. “You’ll be paid later today, Sha,” he said. “I have other business to attend to. I was hoping you could come help me with that, actually.”

“Is it another job?”

The drakka made a noise that was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. 

“So what do you need me for?”

“It’s politics,” Tacdru admitted. Adrien was still so ignorant of the politics that clouded the galaxy, and the lizard-like alien knew his distaste for it. “But I thought you might be interested in this one. I’m meeting with an envoy of humans.”

“Humans?” Adrien’s heart skipped. “What do they call their planet?”

“Earth.” The English word sounded strange from an alien mouth, sounds twisting when repeated by a mouth that found it impossible. “I assumed they would be more comfortable if they could speak their own language with someone.”

Adrien bit his lip, regretting that he had neglected English over the past years. With Plagg, he spoke French. Outside the ship, a few trade languages. The ship’s reading materials in French, English, Russian, and Chinese were plentiful, giving him the option to read in French when he wasn’t figuring out an alien language and not run out of reading material anytime soon. 

“Earth has a lot of languages,” Adrien began carefully. “I might not speak theirs. But having another human on your side already might help the negotiations.” He was damning himself, he knew, giving Tacdru more reason to introduce him to the humans at that table. He was desperate to be around other humans, and that need scared him. He wasn’t even sure how they would receive his appearance and loyalties. 

But he had stopped caring what people thought of him when he first put on the Chat Noir mask. The idea of other humans put him back in that mindset of a teenager trying to earn the praise of his father. It was a dizzying nostalgic feeling. 

“Plagg, claws on,” he murmured. The superhero pose during the transformation had always come on from that surge of power through his veins. Now, he just flexed his claws, tail curling under his cloak. 

“Okay. Now I’m ready,” he said, more to himself than the drakka. “I’m pretty sure I saw them on my way in.”

Adrien Agreste wasn’t recognizable as the model anymore. Age took care of most of that. A scar over the side of his face added to the image of the rugged space traveler. He chuckled to imagine how his father would have called for plastic surgery to save his young career. 

Armed now with the mask, Chat Noir downed the rest of his drink, feeling it prickle down his throat, and stepped back from the bar. Tacdru dwarfed him, even after a growth spurt giving him a burst of height. Because of the height difference, however, the group of humans focused on the drakka instead of the human-sized cloaked figure beside him. 

Tacdru squeezed into a seat across from the humans, greeting them in a common trade pigeon. They chirped back in the same language around closely-guarded mouthpieces before he gestured, and that was Chat Noir’s cue to incline his head. 

“I thought you might be more comfortable to see that drakka have worked with humans in the past. We call him Sha.” 

Chat Noir took that as his cue to step forward. “It’s been a few years, but I used to be called Chat Noir, _du Paris_ ,” he introduced with a mild flourish, his hood falling back with a flick of his ears. “It’s Sha Nwar nowadays.” Of course, the two names sounded similar, almost the same, but the lilt of accent saying the new one was different. It was alien. Adapted for a thicker language that didn’t make as much use of nasals. 

The name evidently rang a bell. It warmed his heart to know that the heroes of Paris were not forgotten. But both him and Tacdru were taken off guard by the flurry of French that followed, the two women slamming their hands on the table, briefly attracting a few startled glances from around the bar. 

They didn’t stop to let him answer one at a time, endless questions shot rapid-fire in his direction. He glanced to Tacdru before switching languages as well. “Ladies, please, one at a time! There’s enough of me to go around,” he said, but some of the questions made his grin more forced. Those weren’t memories he was eager to revisit. But the next question made him freeze. 

“Your voice is deeper.”

His grin froze. So they must have talked to him before in Paris to be able to recall his voice. “It’s rude to speak _en francais_ when some of us here don’t understand,” he pointed out instead of replying, eyes darting to the girls’ companion. The man looked just as confused as Tacdru; Chat Noir would wager a guess he didn’t know French. 

Tacdru was quiet for a moment as they took seats at the table. “I didn’t expect this,” he said. “But I should have. We first met Sha when he was a child and we thought his family had been killed. I don’t know how long he’s really been away from his human kin...”

“I’m special,” Chat Noir summed up, dismissing that conversation. “We can talk as humans afterwards.” The pigeon language was not amazing for more casual slang, making any conversation sound brusque. 

“This is politics,” he added, leaning forward on the table. “So talk politics.”

The one that hadn’t spoken yet clapped his hands, finally interjecting. “Right! I am called Benjamin Fitzgerald, representing the United States and Earth. And my partner, representing France, is called Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

Chat Noir’s eyes widened, recognition finally clicking. Yes, his once-classmate had definitely heard his voice enough to realize it had changed. His eyes flicked to the third of their group, a notebook in her hands. That had to be…

“Alya Cesaire, our writer. She will be writing everything down.”

Two friends he had mourned for years ago.


End file.
